How to Start a Blog?
- Understand your Audience.
- Check out your Competition.
- Determine what topics you’ll cover.
- Identify your unique angle.
- Name your Blog.
- Create your Blog Domain.
- Choose a CMS and set up your blog.
- Customize the look of your blog.
- Write your first blog post.
What is Blog Post?
Blog posts allow you and your business to publish insights, thoughts, and stories on your website about any topic. They can help you boost brand awareness, credibility, conversions, and revenue. Most importantly, they can help you drive traffic to your website.
A Blog post is an Article, News Piece, or Guide that’s Published in the Blog Section of a Website. A Blog post Typically covers a specific topic or Query, is Educational in nature, Rang from 600 to to 2,000+ words, and contains other Media types such as Images, Videos, Infographics, and Interactive Charts.
Anyone can connect with their audience through blogging and enjoy the myriad benefits that blogging provides: organic traffic from search engines, promotional content for social media, and recognition from a new audience you haven’t tapped into yet.
What is the Difference between a Wiki and Blog?
A wiki is a collaborative space where anyone who visits the site can edit, share, or publish content — Wikipedia is one of the most popular examples of this. On the other hand, there is typically only one person, or a team of people, with admin permissions to edit, share, or publish to a blog. Website visitors who come across the blog can potentially leave comments at the bottom of the blog post, but they cannot publish to the site or edit the posted material.
2. To share information about a given topic and become an expert in an industry.
In 2006, Boston-native Matt Kepnes quit his job and began traveling the world. He documented his travels in his now infamous blog, NomadicMatt.com.
After about a year, thanks to tireless blogging efforts and SEO strategies that enabled him to rank on Google, he began pulling in $60,000. Matt also created e-books, and used sponsorships and affiliate marketing to make money. Additionally, he wrote a New York Times best-seller, “How to Travel the World on $50 a Day.”
Now, Matt’s blog attracts 1.5 million visitors a month and grosses about $750,000 a year — and he’s become a well-known expert in the travel space.
If you want to become known as an expert in a topic that interests you, from fashion to blogging to fitness, you can — and, oftentimes, it starts with a blog.
3. To attract visitors to your site, and turn those visitors into leads.
There‘s only so much traffic you can get from the homepage or About Us page of your company’s website. Of course, those pages are critical for leads who are already interested in your products — but they often won‘t attract traffic from top-of-the-funnel. That’s where your blog comes into play. Your blog can be a general resource to help your website visitors even before those visitors are ready to purchase from you. For instance, let‘s say you sell products for e-commerce stores. You might attract some e-commerce owners who are already searching online for your products, but in most cases, the e-commerce owner isn’t going to be ready to buy right out of the gate.
Alternatively, if you begin blogging about tips to help the retail owner who is just starting out — like “How to start a retail website”, or “Benefits of e-commerce vs. physical store” — you‘ll slowly attract an audience who enjoys your content and finds it useful. Then, when those site visitors’ e-commerce stores begin growing (thanks, in part, to your blog), they’ll already know about your brand and already trust it as a helpful source. That’s when they’ll check out your product pages.
What is Blog Used for?
- To help your company rank on search engines.
- To share information about a given topic and become an expert in an industry.
- To attract visitors to your site, and turn those visitors into leads.
- To cultivate an online community and engage with an audience.
1. To help your company rank on search engines.
Typically, a business will use a blog to help the business’s website rank on search engines. You can absolutely employ SEO tactics, or use paid ads, to help your company homepage rank on page one of Google — but a more effective, long-term solution is blogging.
To consider how your company can rank on search engines via a blog, we‘ll start with an example — let’s say you work for a web design start-up with very little online presence.
You decide to spend the first year writing and posting regular blog content that strongly relates to web design. Over time, your traffic increases and other companies link to your site for information regarding web design. When this happens, Google recognizes your company as a legitimate source for web design information. Eventually (with a lot of trial and error), your blog posts begin ranking on page one of Google for terms like “web design”, “website builder”, and “e-commerce website”.
Then, one day, you search “web design companies in X city” and find your company is now on page one. This is likely due, in large part, to your consistent blogging efforts.
Take a look at How HubSpot Uses Blogging to rank #1 on Google to learn more about specific strategies you can implement to rank on search engines.
4. To cultivate an online community and engage with an audience.
At the very least, you might create a blog to engage with an online community of readers with similar interests. Maybe you start a food blog and ask readers to share their own recipes with you.
Alternatively, perhaps you start a blog that focuses on DIY projects. You post the fun, DIY projects you’ve completed in your own home, and you ask your readers to share their own DIY tips in exchange.